Thursday, June 13, 2013

Timeless Tales- Qur'anic Storytelling

A few weeks ago, as I prepared my two year old for bed, I decided to skip his truck book and switch it up with some quick storytelling.  As I lay him down and looked into his sleepy, glazed eyes, I opened up with a short re-telling of the story of the Elephant and Abraha.  My little one gazed at me with wide open eyes, enthralled, silent, and quietly settled to sleep as I closed the lights and door behind me.

The next morning, during our morning car ride to his sisters' school, Hasan surprised me with a request, "Mama, can you tell me the story of the Elephant?"  I honestly did not expect him to remember it, and what followed was a marathon request for this story, with me repeating it over and over and over.  All day long and for the next couple of days, that is all he wanted to hear or watch from me, his baba and his grandma. I had not expected at all that he would be so open to listening to a story, and that he would be able to internalize it.  But then I realized that he was ready for more stories from the Qur'an.

Since then, I've racked my brains for as much of the Qur'anic stories as I could that refer to animals; because at his age, I think that's what catches his attention.  He's currently loving the story of Prophet Yunus, heard the story of Sulaiman and the ant, and can tell me all the different kinds of animals that Prophet Nuh could have taken with him on his Great Ark.

With his oldest sisters, I used to make the stories into a graphic storytelling experience, drawing a crown to symbolize the Queen of Sheba, a castle, a hoopoe bird (definitely rudimentary drawing) and lots of ants marching along.  I retold the stories to them over and over until I reached a point where I thought they'd gotten sick of it, and that I couldn't retell it in any new light.

And then recently, my 6 year old daughter started asking me to tell her a story during our morning drive to school.  I figured it had been long enough since I'd spent time retelling Qur'anic stories with them, so I started up again on that tradition.  This time around, with my older children, I've found myself delving into the feelings of the Prophets while they lived their struggle with their people.  The pain in Prophet Nuh's heart when he had to give up on his son and watch him drown as a disbeliever; the overwhelming fear in Yunus's heart as he found himself in pitch black darkness, unable to see his own hand as he stretched it before him; the anger in Yunus's heart as he left his people for once again ignoring his message; the thankfulness and happiness that overflowed from Sulaiman's heart as he realized Allah's blessings on him allowing him to understand the language of the ant....

As my children go through different stages of their life, I realize that the Qur'anic tales are truly timeless, taking on a magical presence for each individual in each stage of their lives.  As the mother telling these stories, I have to look at them from a different light each time, trying to bring up a new detail that I might not have caught the first time around, trying to reflect on and understand a side of the story that I might have brushed over previously.  To me, they are truly timeless tales, and as I was reminded a few weeks ago, no toddler is too young to be introduced to them, and no child is too old to hear them again.